Sub-Saharan Africa ‘a beacon of hope’ as China remains world’s top executioner

A NEW annual report on the death penalty has called sub-Saharan Africa a “beacon of hope” amid a decline in executions worldwide.

Twenty countries across subSaharan Africa have now abolished the death penalty for all crimes, Amnesty International said. Just two countries in the region, Somalia and South Sudan, carried out executions last year.

Executions worldwide dropped again in 2017, with at least 993 recorded in 23 countries. That is down 4% from the year before and down 39% from 2015.

At least 2,591 death sentences were recorded in 53 countries last year, down from a record high of 3,117 the year before, the Londonbased human rights organisation said. The numbers do not include the thousands of executions and death sentences that Amnesty International believes have occurred in China, where they are considered a state secret.

China remained the “world’s top executioner”, the report said.

Excluding China, 84% of the reported executions last year were carried out in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan. Countries resuming executions in 2017 were Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The United States remained the only country in the Americas to carry out executions, with 23 last year, up slightly from the year before.

With the progress in Africa, “the isolation of the world’s remaining executing countries could not be starker”, said the organisation’s secretary-general Salil Shetty. Even among those countries some “significant steps” were seen.

In Iran, executions were down 11% and drug-related executions were reduced to 40%. In Malaysia, changes to anti-drug laws now allow discretion in sentencing for drug-trafficking crimes.

But Amnesty International called “distressing” the continued use of the death penalty for drug-related offences, with 15 countries last year imposing death sentences or carrying out executions.